W.I.P. Database.

'tis here

DEPRAVITY  {YA Urban Fantasy} -- in the Giant Outline of Doom phase. See The Ink Timeline.
is my current official work in progress. The story is about fifteen year old Gwen, who finds out she is a demon slayer and is sent to a demon slayer training school, where she must uncover the motives of a supernatural guild of assassins and its relationship with the disappearing students--and Gwen herself.

'tis here

SHADOWED: THE RETELLING OF THUMBELINA {YA Fantasy}-- see The Ink Timeline.

Thumbelina was born from the flowers. Maia was born from the shadows.


In the land of Celeste, Maia Amblyne lives a seemingly quiet life with her adoptive grandmother, but at night she faces vicious apparitions in her sleep: looming shadows that taunt her and draw her to them. So when Maia sees one of these shadows when she is awake, she is compelled to follow it. She will soon realize, however, that the shadow-like creature is a trap, and when it disappears with Maia's grandmother, Maia is determined to get her back. But to do so would mean striking up a bargain with a newcomer, a faerie prince from a completely different world named Zeric who claims he needs Maia to help his clan rise to power, but will be able to help Maia find her grandmother.


But Zeric is not the only one who needs Maia. For a malicious intent, the current ruling clan of Zeric's world needs her to control the shadowed creatures that stalk the night. And a mysterious faerie named Cassandra requires Maia's assistance as well. Maia herself must spend time mastering her skills of control over the shadowed creatures, but she must do it quickly. For despite the number of people who are willing to help her, there are many more who are willing to kill her; and each person she encounters can either take her one step forward--or one step back.

Shadowed was my NaNoWriMo project in 2010 and 2011, but both years I was not able to complete it (boo...)

* Shadowed creatures are gigantic things. Like this big thing.

A RUSH OF NEEDLES -- read it on FictionPress.

When sixteen year old Nell Carlton stumbles upon a strange man encased in needles, she is brought into the dangerous world of the puppets and their human puppeteers, where she must find her role and learn about her abilities to help a supernatural guild.

This is probably my most unofficial WIP that I'm actually writing. You can go to this post for a more detailed blurb, and for more information on ARoN.

That's it!

- E

On weather bi-polarity, awards, and american accents.

-- it's excellent and highly entertaining :3

And now moving along to weather bi-polarity. I'm not sure where you beloved blog readers are, but I'm in Indiana, and when you're in Indiana, you tend to get blasted with all sorts of weather. Last week, we had temperatures in the 70s. The next day, it dropped to the 40s, and the day after that, it started snowing. From what I've seen of the forecasts in April, the bi-polarity's even worse. It's going from the 40s to the 70s to the 60s and back to the 40s in a time span of only 3-4 days. Ridiculous, right?

There's also another nice thing I'd like to mention. Brooke from her lovely blog, Paper Mountain, awarded me something! This is actually the second time, so I'd like to thank her for making my day. No more drowning in self-pity over my ridiculously short chapters! And without further ado, here are the additional requirements of this award:

1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
2.  Pay it forward to fifteen other blogs you have newly discovered.
3.  Contact those blog owners and let them know they've been chosen. 

Unfortunately, I haven't exactly found many new blogs lately, but I will try my best to muster up some. So here are the rest of the lovelies:

- Kayleigh's Kaleidoscope
- Polariod Kill Joy
- Words in Silhouette
- Muses of a Teenage Writer
- Overville

All right, 5 out of 15 isn't exactly great, but those are the newly discovered ones. Thank you again Brooke from Paper Mountain! I really appreciate this :D

Here I am!

I know it's been a pretty long time since I've last posted, and I'd like to say that it's because I've been busy with my writing and school work, and other productive stuff.

Except it's not.

What I have been busy with is reading, which is really nice and all since I barely have the time to read anymore. I finished Beautiful Creatures, Paper Towns, and Last Sacrifice. All really nice books (even though it took me a long time to get through Beautiful Creatures. the pacing was kind of off, in my opinion). Although reading hasn't been the only thing I've been up to. Reading's the only productive thing. Everything else I've done was completely unproductive, and my unproductiveness overpowers reading by a lot.

I still feel guilty. About not writing, I mean. Last time I posted, I said I was at around 87,000 words with my manuscript. Now I'm at 90,000.

A 3,000-advance is good and all, except for the fact that it took me about a month to accomplish this. Which is just really sad. I've found even more problems with my manuscript--like the fact that my chapters are really short, and the flow is always interrupted because it's so short. Good thing spring break is here though. I'll have more time to write.

I'd also like to blame it on my sickness. I've had this cold for a really long time, practically the whole entire winter. But, then again, I guess that's not really an excuse. I feel like this whole entire spring break is going to be really unproductive. But maybe if I write more, I'll feel better and less guilty.

- E

Wahh.

I'd like to say I've been too busy to blog or write or something, except then I'd be lying. Truth is, I've had plenty of time to write a blog post (except today, which is just really ironic), and I was close to sitting down and getting one finished a few days ago. But then I decided against it, backspaced everything, and exited out the window. Because my life hasn't been very interesting lately. I mean, just look at the title of this entry. I couldn't even think of something half-decent to put down.

In my last draft of Depravity, the manuscript was around 84,000 words. Now though, it's 87,000 words, after I did some substitution and added in more chapters. Except I'm still not done. I have about another chapter to go, and more revisions to carry out. So far, I've gotten to around 131/333 pages. In other words, that progress-notice thing to the right is completely wrong. I haven't changed that for a long time, and I'm not going to for another long time. Mainly because I'm getting lazy marking my progress, at the moment. All in all though, my manuscript should reach around 90,000 words, if not more.

I've just realized how pointless this blog entry was. It's like a filler post, almost. But I guess now you know I'm alive xD

- E

Popping in on the Classics.

This blog's been pretty inactive lately, but I guess it's just because I've been extremely busy with school work--and the like.

We're currently reading A Tale of Two Cities in English, which a lot of people find boring, and stupid, and annoying. I'm not one of those people. I actually find it interesting, and I'm actually reading ahead (which is pretty bad on my part, since reading ahead had almost always resulted in bad things happening to my grade). But the thing is, I don't understand it very well.

I mean, I do. Because if I didn't, then I wouldn't be saying it's pretty decent. But it takes me awhile to get past one page, especially one page without much dialogue, and I've found myself rereading paragraphs and lines just to figure out what Dickens is trying to say. This is probably just because it's a Classic, and was written decades ago. But one of my friends told me that, as a writer, not being able to understand a Classic made her feel kind of...suckish. Does this mean I've been reading way too many YA novels? Does this mean I should expand my range of reading, and start picking out all the other Classics? Does this mean my overall writing knowledge sucks?

Hopefully not.

---

On my own writing, I've progressed to my 8th draft. Yesh :P Draft 8 means going through all my revision notes and visiting all those revision-based web pages to get a good feel on how to, well, revise my novel. I can't believe I'm saying this, but: this is going to be so much fun.

And I also present you this article I found on Let The Words Flow: Overused YA Themes . You can find another similar article in The Writer. Pretty interesting.

- E

Mer.

Hello out there. Just thought I'd pop in and say a few things.

I've been pondering several questions lately, that all refer back to my writing. How do you stay organized with your ideas? How do you keep your ideas from blending with one another, and ending up turning all of that into another idea? How do you sift through all your subconscious mind's babble, and try to keep everything straight?

Doesn't it just drive you crazy?

Well, maybe it doesn't. Maybe I'm just the crazy one here for thinking all of that. :P

- E

The different types of drafts (for me).

At the very beginning, it's what most people would refer to as the "first draft". First drafts for me are drafts where I just write with one primary idea, but nothing that branch out from it. At the end, I can't say it really sucks. I mean in the general scheme of things, heck yes, it sucks. But if I'm concentrating on where that draft took me, it doesn't suck. Well. Maybe that's pushing it a bit. First drafts tend to be the longest drafts of the novel's history.

After that, there are the "plot drafts". The number of plot drafts last as long as they need to, until my plot and characters have fully developed. This is where I write and fix the plot and scenes in my manuscript, and toy with them to find the perfect one(s). Not really revising them, but trying to figure out what I'm supposed to actually put down on paper. They kill. They sap up my energy and patience like...I don't know, leeches. Either way, I hate them. And I'm sure plot drafts also hate me.

Next, there are "revision drafts", which are about two or three. I start at the beginning of these (in Depravity's case, draft 7 was my first revision draft), thinking of all the things I needed to finish. I've already compiled a mental list of things-I-have-to-fix, starting with holes and writing issues and the like. While revising, I always feel accomplished. I always feel and know that I'm one step closer to my goal (as cheesy as that sounds), and that motivates me. That makes me...happy. Ish. I like revision drafts. These revision drafts also include revisions from my critique partners.

Finally, the last draft is called, well, the "last draft". This is where I finalize everything, reread it until I'm satisfied, and maybe tweak little things here and there. And then...it's usually off to My Documents, where I never see them again.

Depravity has the first manuscript I've ever written that I don't plan to keep away. I'm not quite sure what I'd really do with it, but I'm definitely not going to shake it off. Depravity's the longest novel I've ever written (the other novels, or I should say short stories, I've gone through with complete drafting lasted only a few pages long). I'm not leaving it. Nope.

As you can see, I have a really complicated writing process. This might not be the smartest thing to do, but I feel the most organized and I write the best this way. If I try anything else, and I have tried some other ways, I get confused and everything is reduced to a mess. I have to take one thing at a time when I write.

Strangely enough.

- E